Can You Die From Eating Too Many Bananas?
Bananas are quite healthy for your body but hypothetically speaking, you can die from eating too many bananas. However, it is still very much impossible. You will have to eat four hundred bananas to die by a banana overdose – enough potassium levels being present to stop your heart from beating.
I suspect when most people are asking that common question, they are asking if it is possible to consume too many bananas at a sitting. While one could debate whether eating seven bananas per day is healthy or not, it is definitely not going to kill you. If you must argue about whether or not it is unhealthy to only eat bananas, well, you should actually be reading articles about nutrition and healthful eating, because of course, it is unhealthy.
If you are eating lots of bananas, chances are that there is no room for you in your stomach for any other functional foods. If your banana habit causes you to consume more calories than your body needs, this can cause you to put on unwanted weight. In theory, you can eat all the bananas you want, provided that you are not consuming too many calories, displaceting other foods and nutrients your body needs, or hurting your health in any other way.
Eating too many bananas can cause you to become nutritionally inadequate, particularly if you are not making space for foods that provide nutrients bananas are lacking, like protein, fat, calcium, vitamin D, and iron. If you are eating dozens of bananas each day, you could run the risk of having excessively high levels of vitamins and minerals. Bananas are an excellent source of potassium, but eating too many bananas may cause health problems.
While bananas are good for digestive health and provide a lot of needed vitamins, eating an excess amount is essential, according to nutritionists. Yes, they are super healthy, and some people even refer to them as the miracle fruit for what they can do for you. Despite the many health benefits that come from eating bananas, there are some side effects associated with eating bananas, which you need to be aware of.
People who regularly consume bananas can get Hyperkalemia as a result of eating too much potassium. Hyperkalemia can have severe consequences, but it takes approximately 43 bananas eaten over a short period of time to experience any symptoms of hyperkalemia. A deadly condition called hyperkalemia can result from eating too many bananas, having a kidney failure, drinking heavily, having low blood-cell counts, or smothering your face in potassium supplements. Eating one banana, or even an entire banana, does not poison you, but eating too much excess potassium will do you damage.
In fact, eating lots of any potassium-containing food is unlikely to be hazardous for a reasonably healthy individual. A normal, healthy person would not get a lethal dose of potassium from eating — certainly not from eating some bananas. Knowing this, one might think one might calculate how many bananas one would have to eat in order to achieve this potassium blood level.
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About 4 is equivalent to eating around 42 bananas, all in the same sitting, which is a feat of nutrition well beyond the non-forced capacity of most humans. About 95% of potassium consumed is sent back quite rapidly to the kidneys, so it takes approximately 42 bananas consumed over a brief period of time for anyone to become sick. You can see that eating nine bananas, or even a dozen, will not cause any kind of potassium toxicity.
| No. of Bananas | Effects |
| 42 bananas | It takes approximately 42 bananas consumed over a brief period of time for anyone to become sick. |
| 10 bananas | You would have to eat over 10 bananas to reach your recommended daily allowance |
| 400 bananas | You will have to eat four hundred bananas to die by a banana overdose |
Well, it is almost impossible, if not completely impossible, to have potassium toxicity as the result of eating an excessive amount of foods high in potassium. I could not help wondering how many bananas one would need to consume in order to get dangerous amounts of potassium. Any kind of estimates about the amount of bananas you would need to eat consecutively in order to overdose on potassium is, really, stupid. British comedian Karl Pilkington once suggested that deadly levels of potassium accumulate in a persons body if one ate seven or more bananas at one time, so supermarkets sell them in packs of just six.
In short, you cannot have a fatal dose of bananas — unless (there is always an exception to every rule) you are suffering from kidney failure and are undergoing dialysis, in which case you need to follow a strictly low-potassium diet to keep the potassium from building up. So, you should eat bananas sparingly, because they are high in potassium and may trigger dangerous increases in the level of potassium in your blood. Since certain diuretics raise potassium levels in the body, you must reduce the consumption of bananas because they may increase the level of potassium further in the blood, which could be hazardous. You probably would need about 400 bananas per day to build up the level of potassium that causes the heart to stop beating.
One banana contains around 400mg of potassium — we need over ten times as much (4,800mg) for health. According to the Linus Pauling Institute, adults need 4,700mg of potassium every day, so you would have to eat over 10 bananas to reach your recommended daily allowance. The numbers differ between people, but you would have to eat about 40 bananas just to get killed.
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For a direct lethal dose of radiation, you would have to consume 10 million bananas in a single sitting, and to have even borderline symptoms, a person would have to consume approximately 270 to 300 bananas per day for seven years (depending on the size). The Linus Pauling Institute reports that eating 18 grams or more of potassium in a single sitting can result in dangerously high blood potassium levels, but this would require eating 171 medium-sized bananas in a single sitting.
By the time you reach banana number 50, perhaps the potassium in your first five bananas has already completed its trip through your bloodstream, and you know that you need to consume another five. The most you should expect to experience after eating is stomach pain, and perhaps, if the bananas you have eaten are too unripe, a bit of constipation and other gastric symptoms.
The acid in eating even many bananas will chew through the enamel on your teeth, damaging dental health even more. Bananas are low in fat, making them a great weight loss fruit; that said, everyone needs a certain amount of fat in their diet. Bananas are a sugary fruit, so eating too many of them and not maintaining good dental hygiene practices could cause your teeth to decay.
According to some studies, bananas may even be more harmful for oral health than chocolate, red licorice, and bubblegum (3). The increased quantity of bananas consumed may cause a number of health problems such as weight gain, increased sugar content, and can sometimes trigger headaches and drowsiness.
What happens if you eat too many bananas?
Eating too many bananas is similar to eating a lot of the soluble fiber present in bananas, which can cause bloating and constipation, especially in those who are already experiencing digestive problems. Fruits include sugar fructose, which Ayesta believes may cause symptoms in IBS sufferers.
Is 6 bananas a day too much?
A single banana contains 450 mg of potassium if it’s 125 grams in weight. The daily recommended level of potassium for an adult human body is 3500 mg. So, according to this, you can consume about 7 to 8 bananas per day safely. That being said, 6 bananas are okay to consume.
What happens if you eat too many bananas?
Even though bananas are beneficial for your health, too many bananas can be detrimental to your health. Consumption of too many bananas can cause obesity, unmanaged level of blood sugar, bloating, cramps, gases, loose stool, nausea, and vomiting. Some people who are allergic to bananas can experience adverse side effects.